Friday, January 18, 2013

When the NRA starts shooting with words

When a commentator suggested that if you give the NRA enough rope,
they will hang themselves...the NRA took great offense because they
said "if you are going to talk about us like that, than say we keep shooting
ourselves in the foot instead."

If that be the case, then since the Sandy Hook shooting, they have fired
enough rounds of diatribe at the media to now be mistaken for an army
of peg-leg warriors.

Regardless of the impassioned speeches from victims' families, intellectual
arguments by gun control activists and common sense proposals offered
by the Vice-President's Task Force, that has resulted in Joe Biden becoming
the Dem's best version of Joe the Plumber,...nothing has moved public opinion
on this issue more, than the NRA shooting their thoughts from the hip faster
than when Oswald fired off three shots at JFK from the 6th floor of the School
Book Depository.

As many as 92% of people now support universal background checks, a ban
on high capacity magazine clips and government sponsored research on the
relationship between guns and violence.

On Monday, Joseph Hall a 10 year old boy was found guilty of second degree
murder for deliberately shooting his neo-Nazi Dad in the head with his father's
357 magnum as he lay sleeping on the couch at 4:00 AM in the morning.

Also this week, Bryan Oliver a 16 year old California boy will be charged as an
adult and face two counts of premeditated murder for shooting two of his high
school classmates for bullying him about his red hair, social awkwardness and
bookish appearance.

These are Poster Children for the argument that our gun culture and far too often
our disingenuous positions on gun control, harm our children in ways that even go
beyond the tragedy at Sandy Hook.

Current gun laws that have been either lobbied for or written by the NRA with
loopholeslarger than the widest circle around a picture of a full body target at the shooting range, can no longer be defended as an appropriate status quo...
an argument that had fallen on deaf ears, until the NRA started to talk and not
shoot!

In fact, lately the Republicans voicing their opinions on a variety of issues beyond
gun control has been responsible for the Democrats best political success.

No one helped the fight for social programs more than Mitt Romney speaking so
eloquently about those 47% of people in our country who are "takers instead of
makers".

And at a time where 75% of teenagers have never even heard of Roe V. Wade,
nothing has been more effective in helping the Pro-Choice Movement than one
prominent Republican donor telling women they should put an aspirin between
their knees to avoid getting pregnant or Todd Aiken sharing his view about legitimate
rape.

If the Republicans just keep talking about shutting the government down and not
paying the bills on money the government has already spent, then President Obama
will be forced to increase government spending on Medicare just to stop all the bleeding
in the Republican Party.

On all key issues the Democrats need to invite Republican speakers to talk about the
issues...and then say nothing! Let's hear from Governor Jan Brewer on Immigration,
Rick Santorum on same sex marriage, Sen. James Inhofe on climate change and anyone
of the Republican Governors from one of the lowest ranked states on education.

So if gun control can give the Democrats a little self-control, than maybe the best arguments they can make to change a nation will be the ones ...they never have to make at all!